Summary
While Gemini Deep Research was researching a topic and building a PDF report, Firefox's memory and CPU use shot up and the whole laptop became sluggish. System RA… (read more)
Summary
While Gemini Deep Research was researching a topic and building a PDF report, Firefox's memory and CPU use shot up and the whole laptop became sluggish. System RAM reached 12 of 13 GB. It came back to normal on its own after the report finished.
What I did
1. Opened gemini.google.com in Firefox.
2. Asked Gemini to research a topic and create a PDF (Deep Research).
3. While the report was being generated, the system slowed down badly.
What I measured
- Firefox held about **2.6 GB of GPU (GTT) memory**, which comes out of system RAM on an integrated GPU, and it ran at about **100% CPU**.
- Total GPU GTT memory in use reached **5.3 to 6.7 GB**, while normal process memory (RSS) added up to only about 5.4 GB.
- System RAM reached about **12 of 13 GB in use**, and the system started swapping.
- After the report finished, GTT use dropped to about **0.2 GB** and free RAM went back to about 3.8 GB.
- Measured from `/sys/class/drm/card1/device/mem_info_gtt_used` and `drm-memory-gtt` in `/proc/<pid>/fdinfo`.
System
- Laptop: Lenovo V15 G4 ABP
- CPU/GPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7730U with integrated Radeon graphics (2 GB reserved as VRAM, 16 GB RAM in total)
- OS: Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS, kernel 7.0.0-43, GNOME 50.1 on Wayland
- Browser: Firefox 159.0.1 (Flatpak)
Questions
1. Is this expected for Deep Research, or is it a known issue?
2. Is there a setting or workaround (for example turning off hardware acceleration, or switching away from the tab while it generates) that reduces memory use?
3. Has anyone seen the same thing in Chrome, or on other integrated GPUs?
Thanks!